Synopsis: The Weekly Standard was at it again, with a howler from down on the farm.

Internet Al, Down on the Farm
Scrapbook, The Weekly Standard, 3/29/99

Gore: A Political Life
Bob Zelnick, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1999

Heres how the Standards Scrapbook section pictured Gores life on the farm:

SCRAPBOOK: As for the mules, it occurs to THE SCRAPBOOK that maybe one of them kicked young Al in the head.

Cute. More of the lovely, friend-of-man imagery we picked up in the Standard last week (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/22/99). We dont know why that old Scrapbooks so mad, but its ornery ways keep affecting its reporting. After quoting Gores remarks on the chores hed been taught, heres what them old varmints said:

SCRAPBOOK: How preposterous. Even when he tries to slum, Gore betrays his blue-blood upbringing. Real farmers, even poor ones, have been hiring bulldozers to clear land since before Al Gore was born, or at least using chainsaws. Only a hobbyist would use an ax. Not to mention, no responsible farmer since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s has plowed a steep hillside; you dont want your topsoil to get washed away.

The Scrapbook hands were disputing Gores claim that his father had taught him how to clear land with a double-bladed ax and how to plow a steep hillside with a team of mules.

But Bob Zelnick, writing for the Regnery Press, sees things a little bit different. He specifically describes how Senator Gore, Sr., set up chores to teach Gore about work. Maybe things werent done like this in the stacks, where future editors boned up on farm theory. But this is the way that Zelnick tells it. Maybe someone kicked him real hard, too:

ZELNICK: [T]here was always a special summer-long assignment. One year the senator instructed him to clear a field that was over-grown with trees and shrubs, with only a small hand-axe as his tool. It nearly killed him, but he finished it that summer, [family friend] Donna Armistead recalled. It was backbreaking work, with a tool far too small for the job, but his father wanted him to learn work and the work ethic. [Our emphasis]

Maybe some of them books fell out of those stacks, and hit them Scrapbook fellers right plumb on their heads! Or maybe this: maybe if them Scrapbook boys had Gores home training, theyd know how to get things right too.